Drift Alternative: Transparent Pricing, Secure Platform

Drift built its reputation on "conversational marketing"—using AI chatbots to qualify leads and book meetings. After being acquired by Salesloft in 2024, Drift doubled down on enterprise sales, making their platform even more inaccessible to startups and growing teams.

If you're searching for a Drift alternative, you've likely experienced the frustration: no public pricing, expensive minimums, and a 2025 security incident that affected hundreds of organizations. Support Station offers what Drift doesn't: transparent pricing, accessible plans, and security you can trust.

Quick Comparison

Aspect	Support Station	Drift
Pricing visibility	Public	Sales call required
Starting price	$60/month	~$2,500/month
Annual minimum	~$480	$10,000-150,000+
Free trial	14 days, no card	Not available
Security track record	Clean	Major 2025 breach

Drift's Enterprise-Only Problem

Drift was never designed for startups. Even before the Salesloft acquisition, their pricing started at thousands per month. Now, getting any pricing information requires multiple sales calls.

“To get the Drift pricing, you have to go through the below process... I had to interact with two different people, go through 2-3 meetings, exchange 10 emails, and answer a bunch of questions to get the final quote.”

“The pricing looked fine until we scaled—hidden usage fees for seats, contacts, and conversations shot our bill up 3x before we could react.”

Estimated Drift pricing:

• Premium: ~$2,500/month (3-5 seats included)
• Advanced: Quote only
• Enterprise: $50,000-$150,000+/year

Support Station: $60/month (Starter), $175/month (Standard), $500/month (Pro). All publicly listed, no sales calls required.

The Security Incident

In August-September 2025, Drift suffered a major security breach that exposed customer data across hundreds of organizations.

“A widespread data theft campaign has allowed hackers to breach sales automation platform Salesloft to steal OAuth and refresh tokens associated with the Drift artificial intelligence (AI) chat agent... over 700 potentially impacted organizations.”

“Salesloft on Tuesday announced that it's taking Drift temporarily offline... 'Drift chatbot on customer websites will not be available, and Drift will not be accessible.'”

The breach affected major companies including Cloudflare, Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, Google, and Proofpoint. For weeks, Drift was completely offline while customers scrambled to maintain their support operations.

Security should be table stakes for any business tool. Support Station takes security seriously without requiring you to pay enterprise prices for basic protection.

Pricing That Penalizes Growth

Drift's pricing model charges per user, creating the same growth tax as other enterprise tools.

“Choosing Drift can be a huge roadblock to your company's progress. It is because Drift penalizes you to grow. It has a charge-per-user model of pricing that will lead to enormous bills every time your team grows.”

“The company wants everyone on their highest tier of pricing so badly, that it makes their other pricing plans not worth having.”

Users report:

• Per-seat pricing that balloons with team growth
• Most valuable features locked to Enterprise tier
• Usage caps that trigger automatic upgrades
• Multi-year contract requirements

Support Station uses flat-rate pricing. Add unlimited team members without increasing your bill.

Support That Prioritizes Enterprise

Drift's support quality varies dramatically based on your contract size.

“Drift's customer support has to be its weakest link. Don't believe me? Go to the G2 Drift reviews and check out all the one-star and two-star ratings. You'll find a majority of reviews talking about how poor their customer support is.”

“Drift has totally shifted its focus to big enterprise clients. This means they provide top-class customer support to only those clients that fall in that category. The rest of their clients are simply ignored and deprioritized for days and sometimes months.”

If you're not an enterprise customer, expect:

• Deprioritized support tickets
• Months-long response times for issues
• Focus on upselling rather than problem-solving

Support Station provides responsive support to all customers, regardless of plan size.

Platform Reliability Issues

Beyond the security breach, Drift has had ongoing reliability problems.

“Known to have bugs in both web app and mobile application: For whatever reason, both the web app and mobile application dashboards are slow to load.”

Users report:

• Slow-loading dashboards
• Routing glitches causing chat misassignment
• Features that break without warning

Your conversational support tool shouldn't create conversations about why it's not working.

Feature Comparison

What You Might Miss

Here's where Drift has advantages:

• Lead qualification: Drift's Fastlane and Bionic Chatbots are designed specifically for qualifying and routing leads to sales.
• Meeting scheduling: Native calendar integration for instant meeting booking.
• ABM features: Account-based marketing features for targeting specific companies.
• Salesloft integration: Deep integration with Salesloft's sales engagement platform.

For enterprise sales teams with large budgets focused on lead qualification, Drift's sales-specific features may be valuable. For customer support teams, those features are irrelevant overhead.

Who Should Switch

Support Station is ideal for:

• Teams who need transparent, accessible pricing
• Companies concerned about security after Drift's 2025 breach
• Startups who can't justify $2,500+/month for chat
• Support teams (not sales teams) needing customer service tools

Consider staying with Drift if:

• You're an enterprise sales team focused on lead qualification
• You have budget for $50,000+/year contracts
• You're deeply integrated with Salesloft
• Lead-to-meeting conversion is your primary metric

Making the Switch

Migrating from Drift to Support Station:

1. Export conversation history if needed
2. Set up your knowledge base in Support Station
3. Install the Support Station widget on your site
4. Remove Drift widget completely
5. Configure team routing and Slack notifications

For most teams, the transition completes in a day.

The Bottom Line

Drift serves enterprise sales teams with deep pockets. Their opaque pricing, security incident, and enterprise-only support model make them a poor fit for growing companies.

Support Station offers what most teams actually need: reliable customer support tools with transparent pricing starting at $60/month—not $2,500.

No sales calls required. No security scandals. No enterprise-or-nothing approach.

Start your free trial and experience support software designed for real businesses.